by Piper Lennox
“Answer my question, first. Why didn’t you tell me you lost your job?”
My eye-roll is involuntary, but strong as hell. “Because it happened the same day you got the best promotion in the world? Because it was the same night you buried a ring in my fucking cake? I don’t know, Oscar. I wasn’t exactly looking to shout it from a mountaintop. Now can you tell me what John said?”
“He just wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings, apparently.” Oscar watches me curse and flop back into the cushions. “Is that why you said yes to me?”
I hate the shame pumping through me, so close to the kind I felt as a kid. Only worse, because this is actually my fault.
“It probably played into it,” I admit, picking at the edge of one of my acrylics.
He takes another breath. “I want you to go.”
Finally, we’re back on track with my rehearsal. I expected this. Actually, I hoped for it: there’s nothing more awkward after a breakup than being forced to sit in one space together while the dust settles.
“Okay. I, uh...I’ll get my own room.” I get up slowly so I won’t seem too eager. The least I can do for the guy is play up my sadness. “Do you want to talk more after we’re both home?”
“What’s left to talk about?” He tents his hands in front of his mouth, breathing through them.
I get my stuff together and set it by the door. “I’ll get a bellhop to come get the rest,” I tell him, lifting my purse and beach bag. He nods, staring off into the blank screen of the television.
“I really am sorry, you know.”
“Yeah.” He sits back against the couch. It’s only as I leave, half my body in the hallway when I look back, that I notice he’s picked up the ring, twisting and turning it every direction under the lights. Watching it sparkle, like the edge of the ocean in the sunrise.
Fourteen
Tanya
“I’m really tempted to push you in the pool, right now.”
I open my eyes. Luka is behind my chaise, hands at the ready, as though he really is about to tip me into the infinity pool. When I lift my sunglasses, he winks and steps back.
“I did make myself a prime target,” I admit. I pulled my chair into the pool itself, on the concrete apron that runs along one side for people to sit in shallow water. To my right, the concrete plummets down into the rest of the pool, at least six feet deep.
“You’re actually not supposed to put the chairs in here.” He shrugs. “Management rules.”
“Aren’t you management?” I get up and reach for the chair, but he’s already lifted the entire thing out with one hand.
“Yeah,” he smirks, “and I’m a real hardass, so.”
The sun is right above us, our shadows reduced to black puddles. I can feel a sunburn beginning on my scalp and wish I’d brought my sunhat from the room.
Luka reaches for my hand. An instant blush sweeps under my skin. The boy doesn’t waste any time.
“No ring,” he remarks. The way he studies it, you’d think the sight of my bare ring finger were as beautiful to him as the ring would be to anyone else.
I smile, even though it makes my guilt flare again. “No ring.”
“Luka!” Jake, the bar lead, waves his arms across the pool deck from the outdoor bar. I look at Luka just in time to see him cringe; Paradise Port has a strict policy of employees keeping themselves—and any problems that arise—as low-key as possible. And Jake, I’ve learned, is not low-key.
“Hang on,” he tells me. He pulls out his phone and dials. A few seconds later, I see Jake look at his own phone, confused. He answers.
I pretend not to listen while they chat. Luka’s face gets darker the longer the conversation goes on.
“Do you know which level?” He starts walking. I’m about to sit back in my chair and soak up some more sun before I have to face reality—I have nowhere to stay tonight and, depending on Oscar’s mood, no plane ticket lined up for my flight home—when Luka motions for me to follow. I tie my sarong around my waist and catch up.
“Get somebody up there. Fast. I don’t care who, man, just—” He stops short as he rounds the corner where the deck ends. I nearly crash into him.
A crowd is gathered at the railing of the deck, with more stopping on the beach below. Everyone shields their eyes and watches as, from a room several floors above, piles of clothes and toiletries jettison from an open balcony door.
“...just get anyone up there,” Luka finishes quietly. He hangs up and looks at me, catching God only knows what kind of expression on my face as I realize the black dress fluttering down, followed by a red bikini, hair straightener, and bottle of suntan lotion, is mine.
“Guess he didn’t take it so well?”
I sigh and lean my forearms against the railing, as a now-empty suitcase crashes down. “Guess not.”
He’s on his phone again, this time texting. “Don’t worry. I’ve got someone on the way up to talk to him, and I’ll get some staff to gather everything and put it in a room.” He lifts his eyebrow. “I mean, I think it’s safe to assume you won’t be staying in that suite anymore.”
“Yeah.” I flinch as my phone charger hits a lower patio, its block snapping in half before the pieces rain to the ground.
Luka’s thumbs blur across the screen. “Done,” he says, slipping it back into his pocket. “Your new room will be ready in an hour or less. Scout’s honor.”
Even though I was fully expecting him to do it, I still blush. “Thank you. That’s...sweet.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Something about his smile is more coy than usual. In fact, the entire situation feels different from how it normally would. Every other visit, Luka makes it clear he’s scoring me an upgrade so he can bend me over the best bed, sofa, kitchen counter, etc., Paradise Port has to offer. This time, somehow, it seems like a real favor. He almost doesn’t seem to care or notice how it benefits him, as long as it benefits me.
“Let’s get out of here for a while.” He sighs deeply as Oscar, now finished with my possessions, moves on to lamps and vases from the hotel suite. We can still hear them shattering, the crowd gasping and laughing, as we cross the pool deck and slip around the resort.
“Thanks.” I rake my hair up into a ponytail. The breeze cools the sweat on my shoulders. “For handling everything. It’s nice to not have to think about it all right now.”
“I’ve had one of those days, too.” He shrugs off his jacket, drapes it over one arm, and sets to rolling up his shirtsleeves in that way I know he knows I find irresistible.
“Want to talk about it?”
The clump of dirt he kicks into the lazy river ditch explodes in midair. “Corporate bullshit. Affiliate bullshit. Family bullshit. Take your pick.”
“The affiliate backing out again?” I take care not to sound too eager as I ask this. After yesterday, I wondered if my story—and the entire “regain financial independence” plan I’d formulated—was a bust. Now, I’ve got that burn of hope in my chest again. Today doesn’t have to stay shitty. If I can use this time with Luka productively, maybe I can get myself a plane ticket home and then some.
“No, just...corporate dragging their feet on the branding stuff.” We come up to the beginning of a path down the hill the resort sits upon; it slopes down to the beach on one side, and out into gorgeous green scenery on the other, where we’re now standing. He takes my hand and helps me down the steepest section.
“Branding?”
“Putting the affiliates’ logos and information around the resort,” he explains, “so customers know which things are us and which are local businesses. It’s so easy, too—the shaved ice stand has the Island Ice logo already on there, so like, why not slap the Kona Seg logos on the Segways and helmets, or the artists’ names on the figurines in the gift shop?”
“Do you know why corporate hasn’t done it yet?”
“No idea. I was talking to Trixie about it earlier, but she blew me off. Which she’s kind of been d
oing a lot lately.” His face grows pensive. “It’s weird. Even Parker noticed.”
So Parker’s witnessed at least a few meetings and convos about it, I think. He might know something.
The real question is, will he tell me?
“And my dad and I got in a fight this morning,” he breathes, kicking some gravel into the pili grass lining the path. “He thinks I should call off the affiliate program altogether, cancel the lazy river...simplify things, I guess.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “You? Simplify?”
“Right?” He laughs with me and turns, walking backwards in front of me, hands in his pockets. “He also thinks I’m missing out on the important things in life, because I’m working too much.” I see a flash of pink as his tongue runs along his lips. “That part, I can kind of agree with him on.”
“Can’t argue with an ulcer, I imagine.”
“There’s that,” he agrees, turning back, “but...I don’t know. Maybe he’s onto something with the whole ‘achieving balance’ thing. I haven’t gone surfing in months, I can’t remember the last time I slept late just for the hell of it...” He pushes back his hair and glances at me. “...and I haven’t been on a date in God knows how long.”
I shouldn’t feel guilty. Luka and I have had this arrangement for two years; he knows the deal. It’s just sex and some summer fun, and then we go our separate ways. We put our lives on hold when we’re together, but the minute it’s over, we go back to our worlds. And when this week ends, I’ll be back in my apartment, no job in sight, living off what little savings I have, unless I use the time I’ve got here productively.
In a way, we were always just business. I’m just taking that more literally now.
“I talked to Mollie last night.” If he’s bothered by my subject change, he doesn’t show it. “She and Kai are talking about doing the wedding here, some time next year.”
“Here? That’s surprising. Kai was so stoked about moving to California, I assumed he’d want it out there.”
“I think it’s just an excuse for them to keep the wedding small. You know Mollie isn’t exactly a social butterfly.”
“Yeah, Kai’s the same way. He can talk to people fine, but I think Noe and I were the make-friends-with-everyone type. Life of the party.”
I nod. I’ve always known Luka and myself to be alike that way, and from the tidbits I’ve gotten about his oldest brother here and there, he was, too.
Luka picks a flower from a shrub, then offers it to me. I lean in and inhale the aroma.
“Hibiscus,” he says. “No scent.”
“Some of them have a smell. It’s really faint, but they have one.”
“Don’t pick a fight,” he clucks, hiding his smile.
“Do you still miss him a lot?” He tucks the stem into my hair, just above my ear. “Noe, I mean.”
“Yeah. But it doesn’t hit as often as it used to.” His fingers linger against my jaw, thumb slipping down to my chin.
When he lets go and turns back to the path ahead, I can’t decide if I’m more relieved or disappointed.
“Since we’re the best man and maid of honor, I guess we’ll be walking down the aisle together, huh?” Luka extends his elbow, winking. I take it. We take the path slowly: step, together, step, together, while he hums the wedding march off-key until we laugh and break apart.
Fifteen
Luka
We reach the top of the hill about half an hour into our walk. I wasn’t consciously aiming for Rochelle’s property, but realize, once we find a clearing in the trees to sit, that I was dying to show it to Tanya.
“See that house, way over there?” I step behind her and point. “That’s where I’m building my place.”
It’s subtle, how fast she bristles. “Huh.”
“It really isn’t what it sounds like.” As I spread out my suit jacket across the grass, she raises her eyebrow. “No, seriously. I don’t want you to think I’m just annihilating some poor old woman’s house.”
“Not a lot of ways you can spin that.” She folds her arms, but then takes a seat beside me.
“When her daughter died,” I explain, voice softening, “Rochelle started talking about selling the place. The only reason she even kept it after her divorce was because she figured her daughter would want to build her own house on the property, someday.”
Tanya scoffs through her nose. “I definitely wouldn’t want to live right next to my mom.”
“Most people wouldn’t,” I agree, laughing. “Eden and her cousin, Colby—Hannah’s daughter?”
“The vet,” she says, nodding.
“Right. Well, Eden and Colby moved to California. Pretty close to Kai and Mollie, fun fact. And Eden just, like...stopped talking to her mom.” I pick some thorns from my shoelaces and flick them off our makeshift blanket, one by one. “She fell in with some bad people, apparently.”
“How’d she die?”
“She fell off a sixth-story balcony.”
“Jesus Christ.” Tanya covers her mouth and glances behind us through the trees. With the breeze shifting everything, the house isn’t visible anymore. “Her poor mom.”
I shake off the guilt that instantly touches down in my stomach. “So after the divorce, Rochelle kind of wanted to sell the house—but once Eden died, it was definite. She told everyone in Kona she was going to sell.”
“So why didn’t she?”
“She started work on the kitchen, I think, but then stopped going to work, all the projects halted.... She basically moved in with Hannah, and hasn’t really been back to the house since. She stopped paying the mortgage, utilities, everything.”
“So you’re thinking,” Tanya says slowly, turning back to me, “she just wants it gone, as fast as possible. Doesn’t care how.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Not necessarily. She was probably so overwhelmed by her grief, she just couldn’t face everything alone.” Tanya’s voice dips, the tiniest bit. But once again, I catch it like a neon sign in the dark. “You should know what that’s like.”
“Don’t.” I cut my eyes at her. “It’s not the same thing.”
“How? How is your dad selling the hotel to Port after Noe died any different than Rochelle not being able to live in her house? Or to renovate her house and sell it properly, instead of a foreclosure?”
“My dad got the franchise for us. Okay? He felt guilty about working Noe so hard, training him to run the family business, and he thought the franchise would make things easier when it got handed down to Kai.”
“Or,” she argues, “maybe it was too hard for him to see the place, day after day, looking exactly the same after Noe died as it did when he was alive.”
“You don’t know my dad.” I stare at her, forcing her to look away first. “Don’t psychoanalyze him or some shit, okay? And even if it is the same thing, which it’s not, who cares? Rochelle’s losing her house. Period. Somebody will buy it at that auction. It doesn’t matter if it’s me or anyone else, the same exact thing is gonna happen. So stop giving me shit.”
“Fine.” She throws her hands into the air and lies back. “It’s not like it’s any of my concern, anyway.”
“Exactly.”
We stay like that for a long time: her stretched out, arms shielding her eyes from sunlight that can’t even break through the trees at this angle; me, stewing with my arms on my knees, grating my molars in the silence.
“Stop. That’s annoying.”
“As annoying as when you pop your gum?”
Her sigh fills the air like mist. “Just take me back to the resort, then. All we’re doing is arguing. I don’t even know why you brought me out here.”
“We weren’t arguing on the way here,” I point out. It takes so much willpower to not snap—to give up getting the last word—but I manage, speaking in a much smoother voice than before. “I’m sorry.”
She lifts her arms off her face and eyes me carefully. “No, you’re not.”
I laugh.
She relaxes, pushing up on her elbows as I lie down beside her.
“Your suit’s getting dirty, you know.”
“I know.” The wind breaks through the plants around us again; a piece of her hair comes loose. I brush it back with my fingertips. “I’ve got plenty.”
Tanya
As Luka ducks his head to kiss me, making me lie back against the grass again, I notice how absurdly easy this feels. Uncalculated, untimed. Even though it’s our first kiss in months, carrying that same electricity and newness every trip does, it unfolds like a scheduled stop, something we both knew would happen. We just didn’t know when.
“I’ve been going crazy,” he breathes, when he finally breaks the kiss, “waiting to do that.”
My laugh stutters out, heart already pounding.
He kisses me again. I feel his hand slip between my thighs, the lightest pressure. The coolness of my bathing suit, not fully dry, fades as the heat of his hand seeps through. I sigh his name against his mouth when he slips the fabric aside.
“Wait.” I grab his wrist and stop him. “Are you sure we have privacy here?”
The look he gives me is a mix of impatience and amusement. “You tried to talk me into sex on a balcony,” he deadpans, “of my own resort, not six months ago. In daylight.” He keeps his eyes locked on mine as his fingers slip inside. “But yes—we have privacy. I promise.”
“Okay.” I exhale and adjust, amazed that he knew I was already wet enough for him. It could have been a lucky guess, but something tells me it wasn’t. Luka knows exactly what he does to me.
The pulse of his fingers inside me is enough on its own, but when I look down and see his arm flexing, tendons shifting in the light as he works to bring me to a high, I can’t help but want more.
“Luka,” I pant, “please, don’t...don’t do what you usually do.”
His movements slow. He was trailing his mouth down from my collarbone to my breasts, but now, even that’s ceased. “Do what?”
